87,000 documents from Brett Kavanaugh's tenure during George W. Bush administration released

Senators release 87K Kavanaugh documents

Author:
Donovan Slack, USA TODAY

Published:
9:35 AM CDT August 12, 2018

Updated:
4:52 PM CDT August 12, 2018

President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, officiated in Washington Tuesday at the swearing-in of Judge Britt Grant, right, to take a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

AP

WASHINGTON – The Senate Judiciary Committee this weekend released more than 87,000 records from Brett Kavanaugh’s tenure in the George W. Bush White House.

To date, more than 103,000 pages of materials from the Supreme Court nominee’s past work have been made public.

They are part of a record million-plus pages of legal opinions and emails from his career as a federal judge, White House lawyer and assistant to the prosecutor who investigated President Bill Clinton.

The sheer number of documents is at least five times more than the past two nominees to the high court to be confirmed, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has said it’s more than any high court nominee in history. Senators reviewed about 182,000 pages of documents on Neil Gorsuch and about 170,000 pages on Elena Kagan.

Despite that, Democrats and Republicans still have battled over whether they should have access to more as they consider President Donald Trump’s nominee.

Such timelines are standard for Supreme Court nominees, but Democrats have argued for more time to review his lengthy paper trail. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., accused Republicans of speeding his nomination through "before we know who Brett Kavanaugh is.

"This is not how the Senate should approve a nominee for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land," said Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "The committee shouldn’t hold a hearing before we’ve had a chance to review his entire record.”

But Grassley said there's "plenty of time" to review the materials.

"It’s time for the American people to hear directly from Judge Kavanaugh," he said.